The Impact of Person-Organizational Value Fit On Organizational Commitment

Backgrounds Organizational commitment is important because it influences the occurrence of burnout and turnover, and ultimately relates to service quality that social workers provide. A Person-Organizational Value fit (P-O fit) has emerged as a critical factor influencing workers' organizational commitment, which suggests that people more attracted and more likely to show favorable work attitudes toward the organizations where they find a close match (Elfenbein & O'Reilly, 2007; Moynihan & Pandey, 2008). Although value congruence has consistently received attention in for-profit organizations, little research done on this topic in social work field. This study examined the relationship between P-O fit and organizational commitment. Three research questions were addressed: 1) What is the degree of P-O fit among social workers 2) What are the preferred organizational values? 3) How is P-O fit related to social workers' organizational commitment?

Methods A cross-sectional design was employed for this study. Data were collected from the self-report survey (244 from 45 organizations, 67% response rate) in the convenient sample of social workers who work in community welfare center in Seoul, Korea. An Organizational Cultural Profile (OCP), developed by O'Reilly, Chatman, and Caldwell (1991), was used to assess both personal and organizational values. Following the procedures for generating Q-sort profiles (Block, 1978), respondents sort the 54 items (e.g., stability, innovation, risk taking, results oriented) into nine categories, ranging from most to least desirable or characteristic values. Descriptive statistics and three multiple regressions were conducted to examine the relationship between P-O fit and three types of organizational commitment: affective, continuance, and normative commitment.

Results The level of person-organizational value fit was relatively low with the mean of .08. Social workers characterized their organization culture by emphasis on collaboration, team oriented, and rule oriented. While, respondent reported preferences for fairness, achievement oriented, emphasis on professional development, and emphasis on quality culture. Two significant regression models (p<.001) accounted for 34% of the variance in affective commitment and 11% of the variance in normative commitment. A P-O fit was the strongest factor associated with affective commitment after controlling for personal, organizational characteristics, and role stressor (role conflict, role ambiguity, and role overload). For example, respondents with high level of P-O fit reported higher level of affective and normative commitment. Other variables including role conflict, education, and religion fit were significant, which indicated that social workers who have lower level of role conflict with no MSW degree, and have religious congruence with organization were more likely to report higher level of affective commitment.

Conclusions and Recommendations The study suggests that increasing level of P-O fit may contribute to increase social workers' organizational commitment. This study has implications in developing recruitment, selection, and retention strategies. For example, managers should make an effort to understand underlying organizational values and select recruits who are likely to share their values with the organization. In addition, efforts need to be made to assimilate person's value with the organizational value by orientation, education, and training in order to retain qualified social workers in the organizations.